


Just Strangers

by epersonae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: BoB-era with Stolen Century spoilers, M/M, Tumblr Prompts, back on my melancholy bullshit, just some weird stream of consiousness stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 02:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17378225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: There's no reason Magnus should know him so well, Taako thinks. And yet....





	Just Strangers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [androids_fighting93](https://archiveofourown.org/users/androids_fighting93/gifts).



> Incorporates a bunch of stuff from my other work, most notably the tea symbolism from [the only life you could save](https://archiveofourown.org/series/910215). Thx to @androids_fighting93 for the prompt!

They’re just strangers, brought together by coincidence. That’s what he tells himself, when he wakes up from a horrible flailing dream, of something, something big, something he can’t…. And there’s big arms holding him close; he doesn’t always sleep in his sleepy sack on the road, it’s too much trouble, or people ask questions, but this guy, this guy didn’t say shitty things, this guy shrugged and said “Bad dreams?” and something in his eyes said he knew, but there’s no way he could really know, right?

Any more than he could know, when Taako woke in the middle of the night because  _ that was enough meditation, elves don’t need sleep, _ that his favorite midnight snack was pancakes, though he hasn’t made them since— since all that— but he used to love making them for…. And his head hurts, easier to just stuff pancakes in his face, cause the big guy’s pretty good at them. He doesn’t ask where Magnus learned, and Magnus doesn’t offer; they don’t talk about the past.

He tells himself that he didn’t already know when Magnus said he loved a good oolong, that wouldn’t trip off of his tongue, any more than he knew that Merle drinks atrocious herbal teas, and the boss lady drinks rose— he doesn’t let himself ask why he knows that, or that he started drinking chai because...because...somebody…. He makes another cup of oolong and it tastes like something’s missing.

He tells himself that the beefcake can’t possibly be looking at him, and then thinks about telling him  _ take a picture it’ll last longer  _ and then they dance in a huge throng after the spooky shit goes down and he tries not to think at all. 

He sleeps without his sleepy sack in someone else’s bunk and he sleeps so well, like he just fits there and that’s not right at all. So before Magnus can wake up and tell him otherwise— before nosy Merle and weirdo Pringles wake up— he sneaks back to his own bunk. He doesn’t sleep. So many nights where he doesn’t sleep, listening to the others breathing, and nights where he sleeps curled tight in Magnus’s arms. Why does Magnus know exactly how to hold him? Why does he get up in the wee hours and there’s pancakes?

They get their own space and it’s easier because he can’t hear anyone breathing and he knows how to be alone but he’s lonelier than he’s been since, since, since when…. His head hurts and he sneaks into Magnus’s room, and Magnus is awake, and  _ don’t humans need sleep my dude?  _ Which why does Magnus laugh like he’s heard that joke before and not in a bad way but fondly? Why does Magnus have to be so fucking fond? What does he know?

Magnus knows too much, Magnus sees him, when he’s been hiding and running, running and hiding, Magnus catches and worries and protects. Taako thinks about fleeing the moon, and yet it’s the first good thing since the show went to shit, the first good thing since she, she, she who? He’s got a good thing there, if Merle doesn’t fuck it up by flirting with the boss, if  _ Magnus  _ doesn’t fuck it up by making eyes at the boss….

And then: somebody new, something new, someone who doesn’t seem to have a spooky knowledge of who he is. Even if somebody new is spooky, goddamn death in a suit, who thinks he’s died? Well, Taako’s been through a lot: who’s to say, really? Hot sexy death— cold sexy death— knows this one weird thing, but nothing else, and he asks questions. Kravitz is sweet and thoughtful and it’s weird. Easy, not easy like Magnus where it’s like falling into a pattern he didn’t know was there, but easy like someone who’s interested in him, or at least pretending to until...until what? Something will happen, something always does, people leave, people are passing, people are…. 

He shivers like something’s walking on his grave; did he really die? He wants to know what it is that Kravitz knows, but even Kravitz doesn’t seem to know more than the tally in the book.

If he puts together what Magnus knows without knowing and what Kravitz knows but doesn’t quite understand, would he get a picture? Would he see himself? Would it look like the hidden portrait of the Director: exactly the same and completely different?

Pancakes in the middle of the night and making tea for the only ones who mattered and leaning against Magnus in the dark with her on the other side  and Barry in the surf and Lup blazing bright in her lich form and she left, she left, she left, and then Lucretia took her away, Lucretia took everything away….

Everyone knows everything about him; that’s what they think anyway. And he’ll play to it, everyone loves a good show. Most of the time it’s even fun. But Magnus still knows how to comfort him out of a nightmare and Kravitz knows how to quietly keep him company on a low day, and nobody else has that. Nobody else gets that, not even now.


End file.
